TonyMerida.nethttp://tonymerida.net
Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:26:41 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2Videos from the Go Conference at SEBTShttp://tonymerida.net/2015/videos-from-the-go-conference-at-sebts/
http://tonymerida.net/2015/videos-from-the-go-conference-at-sebts/#respondMon, 09 Feb 2015 13:32:37 +0000http://tonymerida.net/?p=4336Read More]]>This past weekend, Southeastern held our annual Go Conference. This conference highlights the reality that every follower of Christ is called to “Go and make disciples.” This year’s theme focused on the glory of God, because in order to Go, we must understand who He is and how He calls us to reflect His glory. Why should God be first in our lives? Where should we build our community and use our talents? We have the opportunity to see God’s glory in all aspects of life including sexuality, work, race, studies, and more.

I hosted the conference and was glad to have Danny Akin, JD Greear, Russell Moore, and HB Charles as speakers. Here are the videos of the main sessions of the conference and a panel discussion. For more information about the Go Conference or SEBTS, visit go.sebts.edu.

While every generation has its popular love ballads, I remember that the ’80s had numerous ones (and a lot of people with really bad hair). In 1984, Foreigner sang, “I Want to Know What Love Is.” Tina Turner rocked, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” Stevie Wonder gave us something to say on our rotary-dial telephones with, “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” In 1985, Whitney Houston used her amazing voice to sing, “Saving All My Love for You.” Kool and the Gang reminded everyone, “love will stand the test of time,” with a hit song “Cherish.” Whitesnake sang, “Is This Love?” in 1987. That same year, LL Cool J (perhaps my favorite rapper of the era), sang, “I Need Love.”

Others could add the most popular love songs of the 1990s and 2000s. There’s no small amount of them. If songwriters are the poets and theologians of culture, then one thing is for sure: everyone is interested in love. But many confuse love with at least four popular ideas.

Love is not tolerance

Some think love means tolerance. Certainly tolerance has a rightful place in culture. It’s important in various contexts. In America, one is blessed to freely worship as he or she pleases.

However, some believe that you should never disagree or challenge another person’s viewpoint. To do so will cause one to be labeled “bigoted” or “narrow-minded.”

As Christ-followers, we must not replace truthfulness with tolerance. No one loved like Jesus, yet He was bold and direct. Respect others? Absolutely. Show grace to those who disagree? Yes. Fail to speak the truth in the name of tolerance? No.

Paul said it this way, “[Speak] the truth in love.”

We don’t love the world the way Jesus loved the world if we don’t call others to repentance. And we should do so in a spirit of brokenness and repentance ourselves. Love doesn’t equal tolerance.

Love is not lust.

Others understand love merely as eros. Countless movies, songs, and books are about erotic or sexual love. On a street level, many use love as a magic word to sleep with another person, stripping love of all its nonsexual power.

So, if a dude takes a girl out for a movie, and later they do the cupid shuffle together, leaving them hormonally excited, the next move in the “Loser Handbook” is to say the words “I love you.” That’s code for, “Let’s break some commandments.”

Ladies, don’t believe that cat.

The type of romantic love that one is made for is covenant love. It’s the type of love that’s talked about in the Bible between God’s faithful love for His people; Christ’s love for His church; and a husband and wife’s love for one another. Love isn’t lust.

Love is not for pizza.

Many have a diminished view of love. We’re tempted to use “love” for all kinds of things: “I love pizza.” “I love baseball.” “I love munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts.”

In doing this, people have no other word to describe deep, abiding, eternal love. When a teenager says, “I love you” to a girl he just took to the mall, he doesn’t usually mean it. He means, “I love you like a munchkin.”

Love is not sentimentalism.

Finally, love isn’t sentimentalism. While one’s feelings are very important, we need to remember that love is more than a feeling.

Love is more than feeling sorry for someone, or having your emotions stirred by a film or piece of music. Love involves tangible action.

When one considers the millions of orphans in the world, or the millions of children being trafficked, or those going without bread today, our sentimentalism isn’t helping them. They need someone to act with love.

“I wanna know what love is.”

So let’s try to answer Foreigner’s question. How can we tell someone what love is? I believe that the Bible cuts through the fog of confusion on this issue. The apostle John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, wrote much about love. Here’s what he says:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers (1 John 3:16, emphasis added).

John says that we don’t have to guess about love. If the professor asks you, “What is love?” and you begin listing things on the whiteboard, you can quote 1 John 3:16.

What kind of love was this? Jesus’ love wasn’t simply a mystical love, or a philosophical love, or sentimentalism. Jesus’ love was an active love. He didn’t merely say he “loved.” He demonstrated love. His greatest act of love was at the cross. Paul wrote, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Therefore, I would define love something like this: Love involves compassion that leads to action.

Jesus’ compassion drove Him to wash His disciples’ feet, to serve others, to weep over the city of Jerusalem, and to die as a substitute for sinners. John says it should drive us to lay down our lives for our “brothers.” He reminds us also that it’s more than words, “Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action” (1 John 3:18, HCSB).

God’s people are called to care for those in the community of faith with a love that is different from its culturally conditioned counterfeit (Gal. 6:10). But as we scan the whole Bible, we know that Christians are also called to love their neighbor, to love the least of these, and to even love their enemies (Matt. 5:43–48; 22:37–40; 25:40, 45).

Again, Jesus’ life and death exemplifies such love, and once a person receives salvation in Christ, then the Spirit empowers such love. Christ loved the brothers; He loved His neighbor; He loved the least of these; and He loved His enemies.

In Jesus, we know what love is. It’s the ordinary expression of one neighbor to another.

Following a week of excess consumption, the recently established Giving Tuesday is like a warm shower the morning after sleeping in an outhouse. I highly encourage everyone to embrace this unique and much needed trend of #unselfie-ness.

Here are ten ways you can jump on this bandwagon of benevolence. Feel free to tweet the ways you can help:

In January 2015, my new book, Ordinary: How to Turn the World Upside Down, will be released. I hope to encourage ordinary people like you to do the ordinary things with gospel intentionality for the good of a broken world.

In Acts 17, we see a picture of obedient followers of Jesus who were described by city officials as those who “turned the world upside down.”

To turn the world upside down, you don’t have to be a megachurch pastor, or have an impressive platform. You simply need to live on mission – in word and deed – within the ordinary rhythm of life. We need millions of ordinary, genuine followers of Jesus to live with gospel intentionality daily, not 20 more conference speakers.

This kind of life might not seem spectacular or sensational in the eyes of some, but from a Kingdom perspective, it truly is extraordinary.

The book will be available nationwide on January 1st, 2015. You can pre-order a copy today through one of the retailers below (or check with your favorite retailer):

Everyone is not called to live in a mud-hut in India. Some are. We should celebrate and support those that are. But what about the rest of us? What should we do? I hope that this book will help see the significance of the ordinary, mundane, and trivial. God really does use ordinary people like us.

]]>http://tonymerida.net/2014/new-book-announcement-ordinary-how-to-turn-the-world-upside-down/feed/10What Is the Link Between Pornography and Sex Trafficking?http://tonymerida.net/2014/what-is-the-link-between-pornography-and-sex-trafficking/
http://tonymerida.net/2014/what-is-the-link-between-pornography-and-sex-trafficking/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 13:21:48 +0000http://tonymerida.net/?p=4271At the recent ERLC Summit event in Nashville, I was interviewed by the Christian Post about the connection between pornography and sex trafficking. Here is that interview.

NASHVILLE—Tony Merida, the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, spoke on the topic of human sexuality during the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s annual leadership summit that was held in Nashville last week.

Following his discussion on “the Gospel and human trafficking,” Merida, an associate professor of preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, spoke with The Christian Post about the relationship between pornography and sex trafficking, explained why awareness is insufficient, and laid out how Christians can do more to fight “the darkest of sins.”

The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

CP: How effective is “awareness?” To what extent does it overexaggerate our actual ability to make a difference on sex trafficking?

Merida: I think it does both. It’s helpful, but it’s insufficient to actually eradicate a problem. So I speak on orphan care more than I speak on human trafficking, and I always say about orphan care that simply because you’re aware that there are orphans and simply because you have a sympathy for orphans, your sympathy isn’t actually helping a single orphan until you actually do something.

It’s the same with trafficking. It’s good to be aware of the problem. It’s good to have compassion for victims, but until we actually do something to alleviate the problem we end up basically adopting a view that is essentially thinking that sympathy is a substitute for action. Awareness is a good place to start, but it’s insufficient to actually helping eradicate the issue.

CP: How can those fighting human trafficking make young people who are passionate about this issue aware of their own influence and power?

Merida: The awareness piece that is missing, I think, is we tend to reduce sex trafficking to a particular profile and a particular problem, when the problem is super complex and there are so many interwoven pieces to it that I think we need to spread awareness about.

For example, the relationship between pornography and sex trafficking. The relationship between the uneducated and sex-trafficking. The relationship between the poor and sex trafficking. As I said in a panel, much of sex trafficking happens because people prey on the vulnerable. Everyone has vulnerable people in their town, in their neighborhood; this is not simply a problem in Cambodia or Vietnam, where parents are selling their kids for $300. It’s a problem in our neighborhoods in America, where often those who are less fortunate and uneducated become victims. That part of awareness needs to be more front and center.

CP: Earlier this year, I had a conversation with someone where we discussed how those who are often preyed upon are the ones that “nobody misses.”

Merida: I agree whole-heartedly. Fortunately, this is where I think the Internet and Information Age helps us. We have access to all kinds of great resources today that are giving us tons of stories about how this happens.

Preparing for this talk, I basically pulled together 10 different examples of how sex trafficking may happen. These are 10 of a gazillion different ways. Just by reading through a list that involves everything from something that happens in south Mississippi to that which happens in Kazakhstan is very eye opening. It’s very helpful for us to walk with eyes wide open in everyday life. I think that’s one of the solutions: to live as though we really do live in a broken world in which, as [Imago Dei founding pastor] Nathan Akin said in the session, five minutes from a church [sex trafficking can exist.] We do live with blind spots — to know we have is a good first step, and then to educate ourselves and be on the lookout would be the next step.

CP: What is the link between pornography and sex trafficking?

Merida: I’ve learned a lot from International Justice Mission and other really good organizations that focus on this. It’s connected in so many different ways it’s hard to know where to begin. But why do people prey on these young girls?

The part of sex trafficking that makes it, in many ways, the darkest of all sins — though I don’t think you would categorize it in many ways like that — it’s hard to imagine anything that’s darker than preying on a little girl. Something has created a demand for that.

What happens is in many cases, not in every case, but in many cases, guys cannot look at anything that will shock them enough, and so they begin with one form of pornography and they move to another. You see guys looking at stuff that they may not even be interested in, but nothing satisfies their lust and they end up going down just the darkest of paths. So in that regard pornography’s almost a gateway drug to a more addictive powerful drug.

It’s related to sex trafficking in that, in many cases, those in pornography or in that industry are in the sex trafficking industry themselves. In numerous other ways that I don’t think people understand just how related they are, and the ability to view sexual sin in anonymity. It also perpetuates this because sex trafficking is done in secret. It’s a hidden sin and I think part of the similarity between porn and sex trafficking is the secretness of it in addition to the fantasies.

CP: What is the link between your work on orphan care and sex trafficking?

Merida: My wife and I have five adopted children. We have four from Ukraine and one from Ethiopia. When we started looking into international adoption, one of the reasons we were attracted to international adoption, although we’re pro-everywhere adoption, is seeing what happens to children if they don’t get adopted in some areas of the world. We were really broken about it personally. That may not be the case for everyone and we certainly don’t put our journey on someone else as something they should follow.

[Part of what broke us was] looking at heartbreaking statistic of girls who don’t end up getting adopted and ended up in the industry of prostitution in Ukraine.

Sometimes, when they become teenagers, they meet guys outside of the orphanage that will promise them things once they age out of the orphanage. After they leave the orphanage they become objects and are sold to traffickers who prey on their vulnerable. They operate in deceit and coercion, and because the orphan has no voice, the orphan has no power.

The orphan is practically invisible. They are viewed as disposable. And so, I think doing good orphan care, wise orphan care, not just adoption but in the other ways that we can do orphan care, it will help to prevent trafficking.

CP: Anything else you’d like to share?

Merida: I just encourage the group to live a life of justice, truth and beauty in everyday of life and to realize that all the problems are different in different regions.

We need to encourage our people to use their own gifts and abilities, whether it’s journalism to raise awareness, medical doctors, after care shelters, doing transitional assistance for kids who age out of orphanages, or opening up your home for foster care. There are countless ways. I think we need to help people develop ideas and really develop an instinct of care for the vulnerable and say what is it that I have to offer the world?

]]>http://tonymerida.net/2014/2020-collegiate-conference-message/feed/120/20 Collegiate Conference Panel Discussionhttp://tonymerida.net/2014/2020-collegiate-conference-panel-discussion/
http://tonymerida.net/2014/2020-collegiate-conference-panel-discussion/#commentsFri, 07 Mar 2014 12:00:24 +0000http://tonymerida.net/?p=4262At the recent 20/20 conference at SEBTS, I participated in a panel featuring all six conference speakers regarding Christian perspectives to common questions from joining a church to immigration reform to the importance of missions.

]]>http://tonymerida.net/2014/2020-collegiate-conference-panel-discussion/feed/1“Living in Grace” Conference 2014http://tonymerida.net/2014/living-in-grace-conference-2014/
http://tonymerida.net/2014/living-in-grace-conference-2014/#respondWed, 05 Mar 2014 12:00:36 +0000http://tonymerida.net/?p=4258I recently spoke at Grace Presbyterian Church of Peoria, Illinois, at their Living in Grace conference. They’ve posted the videos of the event online and you can watch them over at their Vimeo page.

]]>http://tonymerida.net/2014/living-in-grace-conference-2014/feed/0How the Gospel Can Overcome Sex Traffickinghttp://tonymerida.net/2014/how-the-gospel-can-overcome-sex-trafficking/
http://tonymerida.net/2014/how-the-gospel-can-overcome-sex-trafficking/#commentsMon, 03 Mar 2014 12:00:29 +0000http://tonymerida.net/?p=4256Read More]]>From a recent Q&A I did with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

Why is the issue of human trafficking important for evangelical churches to consider?

It’s an important question culturally because it’s so widespread. Every person should be concerned about his or her abused neighbors. But it’s also an important question theologically. When thinking about sex trafficking, we need to answer questions like these: (1) Who is God? (2) What is a person? (3) How powerful is the gospel? If we believe that God is a God of justice, then we should desire to reflect his character by seeking justice on behalf of the oppressed. If we believe that people are actually created in the image of God, then we must conclude that they are worthy of respect, dignity and basic human rights. We should value all people because we value their maker.

In addition to basic human rights, I also believe that it’s not right for someone not to hear the gospel, and in many cases, those trapped in slavery may never be exposed to the Good News, which promises them new life, and a kingdom where lions and lambs play together. Jesus is the life-changer – he can change the hearts of not only those enslaved, but even the hearts of wicked enslavers. By his grace, God causes the dead come to life; the enslaved to go free; the unrighteous to become righteous; and the broken to dance with joy. That’s the ultimate hope that we have to offer the world, but we may never have that privilege if we don’t first engage on the physical, economical, judicial, and societal front. We can’t live with our heads in the sand on this issue; we need to be alert, wise, compassionate, and gospel-driven in order to love our enslaved neighbor, and to reflect the nature of our merciful and just God.

A Christ-centered understanding of Scripture should lead us to a Christ-centered philosophy of expository preaching. So, what exactly does it mean to “preach Christ?” Sidney Greidanus defines preaching Christ “as preaching sermons which authentically integrate the message of the text with the climax of God’s revelation in the person, work, and/or teaching of Jesus Christ as revealed in the New Testament.”

To see Christ formed in our people, we should always emphasize, in our exposition, the unique person, work, and/or teaching of the Messiah. Graeme Goldsworthy expresses the heart of Christ-exalting exposition, saying, “It ought to be the aim of every pastor to bring all members of his or her congregation to maturity in Christ. But they cannot mature if they do not know the Christ in the Bible, the Christ to whom the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, give a unified and inspired testimony.”

I want to clarify four biblical reasons why the preacher should desire to preach Christ from the whole Bible.